Talking about fruit and vegetables. We have already covered texture. We have covered the color. Now, let's look at the taste. And the three prominent taste that we always want to associate with fruits and vegetables are the sweetness, the bitterness, and savory. Now, sometimes we talk about, about the sourness, but then I think that's usually not our favorite. So let's look at these three tastes and see what happens. Now, we notice that from most of fruits when they ripe they would actually reach a level of about ten to 15% of the weight. actually is made of sugar glucose, so that's why they are so sweet. And when they're not usually they would store a lot of their energy in the form of starch. And the starch usually they are tasteless and actually they give you that plain texture, very grainy. And, and also at that time usually they would have a lot of like a sour substance being stored in the fruit. So, in the way when the fruit is ripening, they're converting of the starch and the glucose, and the sourness start to go away so therefore, ripe fruit interface becomes much, much sweeter. Now, on the other hand, when you look at vegetables. Usually, we seldom talk about vegetables being sweet but for the vegetable, we are not really probably looking for the, the taste of sugar. But then usually plant or vegetable gives you a lot of different kind of texture and the color. I think that's really most important part of it. Now, on the other hand, think about the bitterness. Bitterness usually is associated with some of their, the compound which we call alkaloid. And what are the alkaloid usually used for? These are plant metabolize that usually, they are used for trying to scare the animal away so that they would not eat them. Now, so therefore you, we, we often see them in the bark or in the coating of the seeds or so. And these are used for chemical defense, so that they would be able to survive, because they're not being eaten up. So, therefore, we play around with this too. And usually, where do you see that bitterness? In the seeds. Now, so it's very easy. You think about yourself. If your are a plant, and you are in airport, what do you want yourself to be? You want some animal to come and eat you. But then you want them to sweep the seats out so that the seats can be like a spread, and you can have a new plan coming out from somewhere else. Now, so therefore the usually sweet part, in fact this part is just for attracting animal to eat it, but the seed actually they don't want you to eat them. Now, there's another taste associated with plant which will sometimes we didn't realize they exist. That is the savory part. Remember what savory is about. Umami, umami is a taste of amino acid. Think about that, a plant in fact using is just carbohydrates and sugar, no, actually they do have cells. Cells are made of proteins, too. So therefore if you eat plants, some plants, they have a lot of cellular content, if they're not just vacuole. They would have a lot of amino acid component in them. And when you eat them, in fact, they would give you a sense of umami. That means they taste good. so with that in fact, we can mix all of this free and essentially would add into the dish to introduce this free taste. Of course, there's another one which is about Astringency. Now, this is a very interesting sense because astringency usually is associated with a compound which is called tannins. And tannins actually is a, a class of compounds. And these, again, they are phenolic compounds with multiple rings. And what they happen is, to do is that these multiple rings that will be able to associate with some of the salivary protein to pull them together. To make them form aggregates. So therefore it generates a feeling of very grainy. kind of like a feeling. in terms of the texture when this is on your tongue. So simply, if you don't know what astringency is about. Think hot, when you're drinking English tea. And you push your tongue against your palate. You certainly feel that? It's a little bit rough, and that's the kind of feeling of astringency. And most of the time, actually, is also associated with the bitterness, because tannin in general, they taste bitter. Now, so in order to play around with all this taste, sometimes we want to have the sweetness. Because, as I told you earlier, that it reflects that the nutrients that we are aiming for. we want to have this s-s-s-sweetness as the primary taste but we don't want to have the bitterness. We want to have the savory because they taste good. So, therefore, among the sweet taste, we want to be able to suppress this bitterness. And this astringency, this roughness, again by itself, it's not really pleasing. So, what we want to do is to think of a way to eliminate this astringency. Remember, these ring associated with protein bring them together to form aggregate and that give you the astringency property. In order to eliminate that possibility, the best way to do it is it to prevent this tannin from associating with all your salivary protein. So what do you do? What you do is that when we are eating all of this kind of, of fruits, including for example, these are the fruit that we obtain from grapefruit or, or from teas or so, they are also astringent. We would always mix it together with something else. Now, so remember, we don't want them to cross the salivary protein. this live reporting so what you do, is try to provide addition of protein to be associated with this tanning so that they will not be able to pull the salivary protein together. So combining them together, that's the strategy that we propose to you. First of all, astringency usually gets enhanced when it's in a very acidic or in a very salty condition. So whenever you find something which is astringent, try to stay away from acid and salt. Okay? The second thing is that, we see that eat together with sugar. What happens? Astringen has a component which is about bitterness. You remember about the taste-taste interaction. In fact sweetness can suppress bitterness. So if you eat it together with sugar, basically it takes care of bitterness already. And finally, what you do is that a lot of time, mix this astringent food together with milk. Sometimes meat, sometimes with cheese, so milk, meat, and cheese these are protein rich food. And they provide a lot of protein that to compete for this tannin, where your salivary protein. As a result, if they compete away the tannin, your salivary protein would not be aggregated and it takes away that astringency. And of course, sometimes when you have some food which is rich source of pectin or gum also, they would also carry away some of this tannin. And of course, the other way that you can do it, is to try to eat it together with some fats or oil. That would also smooth it out to prevent the astringency from bothering you. Now, having all this essentially, we have cover from the very beginning talking about vegetables. It kind of contribute to the texture. We talk a lot about the different kind of color, now we talk about taste. Combine together. Basically, you can think of that, well maybe your main dish is actually a steak, but then you want to decorate with all this vegetable. And playing around with the texture, playing around with the color, and playing around with the taste. You are basically enriching the exposure. Remember, we want to have the texture contrast theory at work. In fact, sometimes contrast theory is at work more than just on the texture. You want to have the contrast of all the taste, texture, and color, and smell all combined together. When you can achieve that yes, you can make a good dish.
